


Emotional Playback

by Driezai



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 19:54:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2480471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Driezai/pseuds/Driezai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What could have caused Ratchet to end up going after Drift? Potential spoilers for MTMTE #33.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Emotional Playback

**Author's Note:**

> For context, from the solicit for Empire of Stone: “DRIFT left the AUTOBOTS in disgrace and now he’s alone, on a mission to clean up the darkest depths of the galaxy-until RATCHET shows up to try to bring him home!”
> 
> But why would Ratchet show up? Well, I had an idea. Oneshot, soon to be completely jossed.

Ratchet couldn’t hold it in any longer.

He’d been in his office, doing Rewind’s daily check-up – possibly the only fifteen minutes of the day he spent away from Chromedome, other than his appointments with Rung – and Ratchet had been biting his lip, determined not to ask the stupid question that had been plaguing him. But it was no good, he thought, as he set the scanner down on his desk and watched Rewind shift impatiently on the examination table, waiting to be dismissed.

He simply had to know.

“Is it true?” He blurted, the words slipping from his mouth before he could stop them. “I mean – hell, I’m sorry to bother you about – you know…”

“It’s okay,” Rewind shrugged, “everyone else does it. What do you want to know?”

Ratchet sighed. He’d already started now; there was nothing for it but to get it out of the way, like extracting shrapnel from a wound. Best to get it over with in one sharp tug.

“Swerve keeps saying he’s got all this gossip about the other Lost Light.” He couldn’t help but say the name quietly, as though it were a curse. “He told me that Drift and I were together. Is it true?”

“Oh,” said Rewind, “yeah. That was true.”

Ratchet stared, trying to gauge his sincerity. “Seriously?”

If he was honest, part of him hadn’t really expected it to have actually happened. After all, surely there couldn’t have been  _that_  much difference between Ratchet and his Drift and their duplicates? But Nightbeat had told him the way Megatron had found his alternate, side by side with Drift, and he’d immediately been reminded of the two of them outside medibay, facing overlord.

_Your faith, your sword, and your friend. We do this together._

“You don’t believe me, do you? I have footage, if you’d like to see. And please don’t ask if I’m sure, I wouldn’t be offering if I wasn’t.”

Ratchet… really shouldn’t.  He knew already that if Drift had been happy with his alternate self, while it would make him glad that at least one Drift had been happy, it would hurt some part of him to know that he could have given that to  _his_  Drift.

However, he must have been becoming a sentimental fool in his old age, because curiosity got the better of him and he apprehensively accepted the end of the cord Rewind had been unspooling. He sat in the chair in front of his desk as he slotted it into the port in the side of his head.

At first he saw only darkness, but he knew immediately from the dim oblong outlines of berths, and the glow and hum of familiar machinery that he was looking at medibay, the place so familiar by now that he recognised it even swathed in the darkness of the ship’s night cycle. It took him a moment longer to place the oddly low angle – there was no security camera in this position, only marginally higher than the berths – but it must have been one of the medibots, alerted by a sharp noise from an occupied berth: the muffled cries of someone in a nightmare.

The lights powered on to their dimmest setting, revealing his alternate self rising from a desk at the other end of the room, completely identical down to the distinctive scowl; watching him was like having a strange form of amnesia. The faint light was just enough to show two other unconscious patients, and to give identity to the shape of interesting curves and angles on the closest occupied berth: Drift, curled on his side. Not that Ratchet needed this confirmation; he’d recognised that voice, and it wrenched at his spark to hear it so desperate.

Accordingly, his other self hurried across the room urgently, sitting on the edge of the berth in order to soothe one careful hand down the taut backstrut, the other finding a red shoulder and shaking it gently.

“Drift! Wake up. You’re safe.”

“R-Ratchet?” Drift croaked.

“Yes, I’m here.”

Drift rolled onto his back, reaching for the medic, and Ratchet leaned down to hold him close, one arm wrapping around Drift and the other taking his own weight. Black fingers clutched tightly at the broad red back. “Ratchet…”

“I’m here now. I’ve got you.”

A faint rattle of plating gave away Drift’s shivering, and Ratchet nuzzled ( _nuzzled_ ,  _of all things_ , the present Ratchet thought) the side of the swordsmech’s face comfortingly. Gradually the quiet sound faded, and Ratchet carefully settled Drift back on the berth in order to move his hand to a helm finial, stroking it slowly from base to tip, apparently confident that this was the best way to soothe Drift. And he seemed to be right, as the tenseness began to leave the white frame as though Ratchet’s hand was absorbing it.

While he lay back, Drift’s expression was hidden from the medibot by a scalloped shoulder, but Ratchet’s face was visible, still frowning slightly, mouth pulled down in concern.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. It was just a usual one.”

“Rodimus?”

Drift shook his head slightly, nudging Ratchet’s hand. “Dead End.”

Ratchet sighed softly, with a nod, and leant down to press a chaste kiss to Drift’s helm crest. “It’s just a memory.”

“I know.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” But the voice wavered.

Ratchet’s mouth flattened, and the observing Ratchet could practically hear his thoughts:  _When will you learn you can’t fool me?_ “Uh huh. Now answer me truthfully.”

“I’ll be fine in a minute.” Drift must have smiled because Ratchet’s face echoed it, as a dark hand rose to brush the side of Ratchet’s helm gratefully. “…Better now you’re here.”

Ratchet snorted softly. “Then I suppose that’s the only good side effect of you ending up in medibay.”

“Or, you know, you could always leave it more often,” Drift said, with an edge of that teasing voice the present Ratchet remembered so well… and often tried not to think about.

“I could, if you idiots stopped injuring yourselves for five damn minutes.”

Drift gave a quiet chuckle. “How else are we going to keep you busy?”

“I’m sure you could come up with something,” Ratchet huffed.

As he leaned up, Drift’s cheeky grin was briefly visible before he kissed Ratchet, his arms sliding up behind the medic’s shoulders. Ratchet – at least, the alternate one – wasn’t taken by surprise, kissing back keenly. For his own part, the present Ratchet wanted to look away, his spark seeming to constrict in his chest, but found himself unable to, transfixed by the expert way Drift moved his mouth, by the soft noises that passed between them like satisfied sighs.

When they surfaced after a long few minutes, during which the hand on Drift’s finial had stilled, distracted, Drift said, “Oh, I could think of a few ideas.”

Ratchet bridled in mock offense. “Behave. You’re in recovery.”

“That didn’t stop you before.”

“That was different.” Apparently satisfied with the return of Drift’s playfulness, Ratchet sat up and turned his head in the direction of the duty medic’s desk, where the usual sizeable mountain of paperwork sat, foreboding. Seeming to sense Ratchet’s intention – or maybe he was just always that predictable – Drift caught his hand.

“Ratchet,” he murmured, his voice tender in a way the observing medic had never heard before. Similarly, he was caught off guard by the intensity of the fond affection in his alternate’s blue optics as he gazed down at Drift.

“Yes?”

Drift smiled. “Primus loves you.”

Ratchet’s growl was lost in Drift’s laugh. “You little glitch,” he said as he made to get up, but Drift tightened his grip.

“Wait, seriously. Ratchet.”

“What,” he snapped.

They seemed suspended in time for a moment as they held each other’s gaze, the medic waiting with exaggerated grumpiness for Drift’s next jibe, and then –

“I love you.”

Both Ratchets were blindsided at once; but while the present one floundered in shock, gasping, the one in the medibay recovered quickly, his face almost unrecognisable, so affectionate was his smile. Wordlessly, he turned and swung his legs onto the berth to settle beside Drift, without even a backwards glance towards the neglected paperwork, kissing Drift so thoroughly that the swordsmech groaned.

The current Ratchet prepared to pull the cord, but not before he saw his other self slide on top of Drift, still smiling, and lean down to whisper something into his audial that made Drift gasp and wrap his whole self around Ratchet, clinging as though he’d drown if he let go.

The scene ended abruptly, before Ratchet could remove himself from it, and he found himself squinting in his bright office, clutching at his desk hard enough to dent.

“I hope you don’t mind if we don’t watch the rest,” Rewind said sheepishly as he took the cable back and began to wind it. “It gets a little, uh, inappropriate. I guess he forgot he had the medibots set to motion sensor.”

Ratchet couldn’t reply, couldn’t even move.

They were the same people, more or less: only a few different events separated him from the Ratchet who’d smiled like that, and that Drift from his. And he remembered, suddenly, Drift knocked down by a broken pipe in shuttle bay, helping him up, and that look in Drift’s optics as he’d opened his mouth, visibly bracing himself to say something important, maybe even life-changing… and then thought better of it.

_Oh, Drift._

Ratchet released his death grip on the desk and propped his elbows on its surface, resting his chevron on his palms. How many times had one or the other of them almost lost their lives? Why had they wasted so much time bickering, pretending to hate each other, when they could so easily have had… that?

And now Drift was gone, out there alone, everything he’d worked for lost.

“I’m guessing it didn’t work out that way here.”

He pressed the heels of his hands against his optics as though it might remove the scene from them. “No.”

“Did you want it to?”

“I… didn’t know what I wanted.” Past tense. Because he had an awful feeling that he knew what he wanted now. “Drift was an idiot. Anyway, it doesn’t matter any more.”

“Why doesn’t it? I hear Drift was exiled, so he’s still out there, right? It’s not like he’s dead, Ratchet.”

Hearing the change in Rewind’s tone, Ratchet removed his hands and met his gaze. His visor was darkened, arms folded almost protectively across his chassis.

 _He could be dead,_  Ratchet wanted to say.  _How would I know?_ But something in the way Rewind stared at him, that haunted look, stopped him cold.

“He could be anywhere by now,” he said instead, throwing an arm out as if to demonstrate the immensity of space. “What hope have I got of ever finding him again?”

“Well,” Rewind said, his voice carefully neutral as he dropped down from the examination table, “that depends on how hard you’re willing to search for someone.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I have never written Rewind before, I hope it's not too obvious ovo;


End file.
